“Contraception is the cheapest way to combat climate change,” read the headline of The Telegraph in mid-September, announcing the release of “Fewer Emitters, Lower Emissions, Less Cost,”a study from the Optimum Population Trust (OPT) and the London School of Economics (LSE). Similar stories appeared in newspapers around the world.

Though there has been near-universal agreement that the OPT-LSE paper oversimplifies the link between demography and climate change, the buzz among the family planning and environment communities has continued during the IUSSP conference in Marrakech. Perhaps this is because demographers are not used to appearing in the press except when discussing census results. More likely it is the timing of the report, with the Copenhagen conference on climate change coming in December.

Demographers often get a bad rap for being boring. There’s a saying that demography is all about sex—but the details aren’t as much fun. To find out, I’m in Marrakech, Morocco, reporting on the biennial gathering of number crunchers, the 26th conference of the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population (IUSSP). After the first day, I have only 4 days, 86 panels, 327 presentations, 5,340 PowerPoint slides, and 426 poster presentations left to go.

To most of you, this may not seem exciting. But it is terrifically important. For example, at a panel on maternal health, the presenters offered easier, more accurate, and less expensive ways to collect maternal mortality data, which led to a discussion of strategies for meeting MDG 5 and for improving maternal and infant health throughout the world. Similar panels addressed the challenges facing scientists and programmers working on issues as disparate as water, migration, and the effect of armed conflict on children.

For its 50th Anniversary, IUSSP also indulged in a bit of navel-gazing. Wolfgang Lutz called for more research on predictions and more policy recommendations—what he dubbed the “Demographers’ Transition” (an inside joke, to be sure). Ndola Prata’s “Opportunity Model” (developed jointly with Malcolm Potts and Martha Campbell), argues that use of contraceptives may increase simply if they are more available. Borrowing from marketing theory and such examples as remote controls and Post-It notes, the model generated quite an uproar. A UNFPA-hosted plenary on “After Cairo” closed the day with a strategic discussion about future population, family planning, reproductive health, and development strategies.

A Visit to the Hospital

At the Ibn Zohr Hospital’s crisis center in Marrakech, victims of sexual, physical, and psychological violence are treated and counseled free of charge. Though only founded in 2006, the clinic has defied expectations by helping hundreds of women and children each year, thanks in large part to an effective referral network comprising NGOs, media (especially radio), the police, hospitals, and health professionals. “Listening centers,” local outposts offering basic education on health and rights, are responsible for 56 percent of all referrals.

Ibn Zohr’s services are funded by the Moroccan government and UNFPA. Data has been collected since service delivery began, and shows that the overwhelming type of abuse suffered by women is physical (86 percent), while children under 15 report a mix of sexual (40 percent) and physical (43 percent) abuse, with more sexual abuse occurring among boys than girls.

Other IUSSP site visits included a rural reproductive health clinic, a center for abandoned children, and a house for female students. Too often, site visits are far away from the conference and before or after the main events, costing attendees extra time and money. Instead, the IUSSP site visits are here in Marrakech, where even the most experienced practitioners can learn more about Morocco’s unique blend of modernization and religious and cultural conservatism. These trips are truly unique and invaluable learning opportunities—organizers of similar conferences take note.

Gib Clarke reported from Marrakech, Morocco.

Photo courtesy flickr user DavidDennisPhotos.

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An interactive tool from Columbia University, the Gridded Population of the World (GPW) database, makes it easy to combine population and geographic data, explains Marc Levy, director of CIESIN at Columbia, in an interview with ECSP Director Geoff Dabelko.

Climate change is “the biggest global health threat of the 21st century,” says the final report of a year-long commission held by The Lancet and University College London. A Lancet editorial, “Sexual and reproductive health and climate change,” says that rapid population growth “increases the scale of vulnerability to the consequences of climate change” and that meeting the unmet need for contraception “could slow high rates of population growth, thereby reducing demographic pressure on the environment.”

Mountains of reports and studies have proposed expensive technological responses to climate change. But the scientists and policymakers working to protect the planet may have overlooked one of the easiest, cheapest ways to reduce carbon emissions: contraception.

A recent study commissioned by the Optimum Population Trust estimates contraception would be almost five times cheaper than conventional green technologies. “Each $7 spent on basic family planning would reduce CO2 emissions by more than one ton,” researchers conclude, while low-carbon technologies would add an extra $25 per ton.

Slowing population growth could not only cut emissions, but also help poor families in vulnerable areas adapt to the impacts of climate change, such as land degradation, drought, and loss of food security. However, while governments of the poorest countries often cite population growth as a factor in environmental catastrophes, few address family planning as part of their adaptation strategies, IPS reports from a recent NGO forum in Berlin.

Enabling women to plan their families is not only climate-friendly, it’s also right. Currently, more than 100 million women worldwide want—and can’t get—modern methods of family planning. Better reproductive health care is “an end in itself,” with climate mitigation being the “side effect,” rather than the primary goal, Barbara Crossette writes in The Nation.

While many policymakers shy away from getting population in their environment, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently said, “It’s rather odd to talk about climate change and what we must do to stop and prevent the ill effects without talking about population and family planning.” At the Berlin forum, UNDP Administrator Helen Clark linked the goals of education, equality, and environmental sustainability in a “virtuous cycle.”

As the world’s largest per-capita emitter, the United States has a special obligation to examine its growth and consumption patterns. While the lives of Bangladesh’s 140 million people are acutely threatened by climate change, each new U.S. child and its descendants will be responsible for 160 times the carbon emissions of a Bangladeshi infant according to Oregon State University researchers writing in Global Environmental Change.

Unfortunately, condoms are unlikely to become heroes at Copenhagen. Some populous developing countries like India object to bringing population into the climate change debate without more focus on reducing consumption in developed countries. The Washington Post called the connection “unpopular,” and compared its odds to another “long shot”: geoengineering. Anti-contraceptive groups, development “silos,” sexism, and old-fashioned squeamishness are also formidable barriers to an open and nuanced discussion of how family planning can contribute to mitigation and adaptation.

Too bad, because as Suzanne Petroni writes in the latest issue of the Environmental Change and Security Program Report, “A careful discussion of the ways in which voluntary family planning can further individual rights, community development, and, to some extent, climate change mitigation, could increase awareness not only of the outsized contribution of developed nations to global emissions, but also of their appropriate role in the global community.”

A shorter version of this post will appear in the October issue of Centerpoint.

Photo courtesy Flickr user OsakaSteve.

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Two articles in the Sunday New York Times revealed that some residents of Mexico City and Charleston, West Virginia, share a common bond: lack of clean water. While drought and leaks have drained Mexico City’s reservoirs, pollution and run-off from coal plants has befouled water supplies in West Virginia’s small towns. But in both cases, the less powerful are the ones stuck up the creek without a paddle.

In an Economist.com debate on population growth between John Seager of Population Connection and Michael Lind of the New America Foundation, Seager argues that rapid population growth is “the source of many of the world’s—especially the poor world’s—woes,” as it accelerates environmental degradation and “undermines both security and development.” On the other hand, Lind counters that “countries are not poor because they have too many people,” and asserts that “technology and increased efficiency have refuted what looks like imminent resource exhaustion.”

A vast symphony of natural processes sustains our life on Earth. Recognizing the complex interdependence of nature’s concert reminds us of a simple fact: the social, economic, and environmental challenges we face are not isolated from one another, and neither are their solutions. Tom Friedman drives this point home in a recent New York Times op-ed, “Connecting Nature’s Dots.”

“We’re trying to deal with a whole array of integrated problems—climate change, energy, biodiversity loss, poverty alleviation and the need to grow enough food to feed the planet—separately,” Friedman argues.